Nick (Benedict Taylor) is the best fencer of his club, in fact so good
so that his coach Lovejoy (Jim Broadbent) wants to take him, the naive
young countryboy, to London for the National Tournament. Nick's
purtianical father (Stephen Hancock) strongly objects to that, only
his mother (Daphne Neville) figures if he loses in the championship, Nick
will be taught some humiliation, so they let him go so Nick can return a
better person ... but as father says "no gambling, no ... you know
... women !" Of course, Nick doesn't win the tournament, he comes
in fifth, & decides to call it an early night ... until the
tournament's winner, James (Gerald Logan) persuades him to join him
for a little celebration ... & before you know it has taken him to a
casino & persuaded him to a bit of gambling ... & wouldn't you
know it, Nick, the naive ountryboy, has won a small fortune befroe long.
& the combination of his naive charms & quite a bit of mney make
him attractive to Zoe (Rosalind Bennett), who soon invites him to her bed,
an invitation he would be stupid not to accept. Of course, after sex &
all, when Nick's asleep, she empties his pockets & hides the money in
a flowerpot ... only that he wasn't really asleep, & when she's
asleep, he retrieves the money, & leaves. Only when he arrives at
the hotel where he's staying with his coach does he find out he did not
only retrieve his money but by accident take qzuite a bit of hr money with
him as well. When he tells the story to Lovejoy, unsure if he has done
something wrong, Lovejoy laughs his head off ... Arriving home, Nick's
parents are more than happy to learn he hasn't won the tournament ... but
the lesson he has learned in London might quite differ from what they
wanted him to learn ... As could be expected from Tales
of the Unexpected, the direction of this episode is rather bland,
even boring, but it's nicely acted & the story on which it is based is
just great (as should be expected from William Somerset Maugham).
|